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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26162518">Ripped from History</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kishuku/pseuds/kishuku'>kishuku</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Discussion of prostitution, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:32:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,074</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26162518</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kishuku/pseuds/kishuku</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy and her team are in Whitechapel, London in 1888. They cross paths with Jack the Ripper.</p><p>Andy takes offense to Jack's hobby and she is out for blood. His.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Ripped from History</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A bully during the Victorian era commonly referred to a man who was a bodyguard/bouncer/rent enforcer in some of the seedier lodging houses that rented either rooms or beds to the poor and destitute.</p><p>Landed aristocrats during this period of time quite often took up the collection and study of botany. They would hire artists to paint specimens they'd collected. The other craze at the time among Victorian nobles was collecting rare and exotic knick knacks from far flung places in the world.</p><p>A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in the slums.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“There’s no wonder tha’ man can’t get ‘imself a wife. All the girls know ‘e barely gots a pinkie ‘tween ‘is legs and nuffin’ ‘tween ‘is ears or in ‘is pockets! Should’ve been a born a lord! You can be missin’ a lot of things and still ‘ave those genteel ladies chasin’ after you iff’n you only gots a title,” Catherine cackled, raising her mug and taking a big gulp.</p><p>Andy smiled. Catherine was a crass woman, but she was quick to smile and had a temper to match. She’d liked the woman almost immediately upon meeting her. The boys were fine family, but she sometimes missed the simple friendships and relationships women could share.</p><p>“You have aspirations of being Lady Catherine someday?” Andy asked, jokingly.</p><p>“’Orseshit! Although it’d be nice t’ sleep in a bed e’ery night.”</p><p>Andy pushed the remainder of her mysterious stew across the table to Catherine and snagged the leftover heel of bread from Joseph’s plate. Catherine gave her a quick nod and dug in.</p><p>After a few bites Catherine gave her a wink, “So, m’boy, ‘ow about it? ‘Fore I go out you want a quick one? ‘Elp you grow some ‘air on your chest?” She flicked some of her dark auburn hair over her shoulder to show off a bit more skin at her neck and gave Andy a leering smile.</p><p>Andy laughed, “Catherine, you’re old enough to be my mother!”</p><p>Well, that wasn’t true. In reality Andy was old enough to be Catherine’s great grandmother several times over, but it was sweet how the 40-something year old woman was trying, in her own way, to look out for the sweet faced young boy Andy was pretending to be.</p><p>It was just easier to dress and act like a man in the rough parts of Victorian London. There was also no way in hell she was going to wear a corset unless it was a life or death situation. Not to mention Andy was traveling with three men—Nicholas, Joseph, and Sebastien—so they avoided some awkward situations and questions as a group of four men, although sometimes Andy looked so young Sebastien had to vouch on his ‘little brother’s’ behalf.</p><p>They’d arrived just a few weeks ago, summer already gone and the chilly fingers of winter scratching autumn’s back. England was just as cold and blustery as Andy remembered it. It was a bit of a shock after the heat of Africa. The four of them had just spent nearly a decade in Africa, fighting and sabotaging the very army they’d joined. But despite their attempts the British had defeated the local tribes and all of them were the wrong skin color to stay and continue their efforts. The locals had made that abundantly clear. They’d decided to take the next ship back to England after Sebastien had returned with a spear shaft halfway through his chest and two arrows in his back after an ambush. Removing the spear and arrow heads had been a mess and Sebastien had cussed a blue streak in every language he’d ever learned during the process.</p><p>Andy hated to lose and run. It didn’t sit well with her.</p><p>Now what? Now, Andy had figured they’d earned a break. A break from fighting and maybe from each other, they’d agreed to meet back at the old Pelican tavern on the banks of the Thames. Maybe she’d think about revisiting Scotland and learning how to herd sheep. It was an amusing thought at least.</p><p>Right now, she was just a young soldier returned from Africa and sharing a room with ‘his’ friends at a lodging house at 26 Dorset Street. That’s where she’d met Catherine, a prostitute who sometimes slept rough in the communal front room of the lodging house on nights it was too miserable to work or when she was too drunk to make it back to her own lodgings. It was an easy friendship, a few moments here and there every day.</p><p>One day Catherine’s man had showed up, drunk, angry and looking to borrow some money. Andy had convinced him to go home and sleep it off, after that Catherine warmed to the young ‘mister’ and started fussing over Andy like a mother hen, albeit a quite often drunken mother hen. Gradually, Andy learned that the man who’d come raging and drunk was actually Catherine’s current partner. Catherine also had a husband and children her husband didn’t allow her to see because of her own drinking. Catherine did the laundry for some middle class families, but had to supplement her income with casual prostitution. A friend, Emily, another prostitute who primarily worked closer to Spitalfields, came by time to time to drink with Catherine. The two women watched out for each other. Life in the slums of London was brutal.</p><p>Emily had brown hair and brown eyes, she was a mousy unremarkable woman. She didn’t have the brass open personality and laugh Catherine did. Emily was quiet and desperate, a moth to Catherine’s laughter. Andy understood it, it was the same reason she found Catherine so refreshing.</p><p>“Well, m’boy, never say Catherine ne’er offered you nuffin’,” she said as she mopped up the last of the stew with the bread.</p><p>“At a price!” Andy laughed back at her.</p><p>Catherine winked again, “Jist ‘cause I offered dun’ mean I offerin’ for free! Nuffin’ in this life is free, m’boy!” She finished her beer and belched, “Well, doss money doesn’t earn itself!”</p><p>Andy watched her go. The pub door opened just enough for Andy to glimpse Emily waiting outside. Catherine had ‘forgotten’ to pay for her beer again. Andy considered it a small price to pay for the bawdy tales and genuine laughter Catherine shared with her. Sometimes when Catherine and Emily were really in their cups they’d sing and teach Andy new lyrics to old songs.</p><p>“I will never understand our boss’s taste in women,” Sebastien said just loud enough from their end of the table for Andy to hear.</p><p>“I like her,” Andy said simply.</p><p>“You like her or do you <i>like</i> her?” Sebastien leered. Joseph jabbed him in the side with an elbow and with a roll of his eyes.</p><p>“As a friend, Sebastien. She’s a drunk but she loves life.”</p><p>“Not worried about your friend going out there? What with the Whitechapel Murderer out there?” Sebastien teased, although his tone held an edge of seriousness to it.</p><p>Andy blinked, “The what?”</p><p>“The Leather Apron Killer! He’d already killed several women in the area even before we got here,” Joseph added. “Last one was a few days before we got to London.” Joseph glanced around the pub before leaning in and whispering, “The Whitechapel Murderer is some deranged individual going around and killing working girls. He’s killed three or four at least, stabbing and slicing them up. The city’s gone half mad with panic. Half the population is blaming the Jews.”</p><p>“The usual suspects,” Sebastien muttered into his drink.</p><p>“It’s been in the newspapers,” Nicholas added.</p><p>Andy shook her head, “Sorry. I guess I haven’t been paying much attention. It’s hard being back in England,” she stared down into her drink. She could not handle seeing the pity or guilt in Joseph and Nicholas’s eyes.</p><p>England was where she’d failed Quynh after all.</p><p>Earlier this century she’d been forced to open that wound again when Sebastien had asked why he occasionally dreamt about a woman who was drowning over and over again. The look of pity the Frenchman had given her almost made her throw up, her own emotions churning inside like a storm at sea. After all the times she’d sailed from continent to continent in the last three centuries none of the ships they’d ever been on had capsized or sank, separated from Quynh’s watery Hell by simple wooden boards.</p><p>Nicholas scooted over and put his hand on her knee beneath the table, squeezing gently. “Sorry, we didn’t mean to forget about Quynh.”</p><p>Andy shook her head again, changing the subject. “Catherine’ll be fine. She’s been here for years. She’d recognize a murderer.”</p><p>~~</p><p>The newspapers printed every excruciating detail; nothing was spared about the two women found murdered last night. How one woman had her throat slit ear to ear and the other had been gutted like a pig at market and her innards strewn about her body. The lodging house was in a tizzy and every woman threw suspicious glances at every man, so their group kept to their rented rooms for the day. It took until the following day for the women’s bodies to be identified.</p><p>The victims were Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.</p><p>~~</p><p>Andy was furious.</p><p>To say the least.</p><p>She proposed they still take their break from each other and she’d stay behind Whitechapel until she’d eliminated Catherine’s killer. Nicholas and Joseph exchanged a glance and announced they’d remain with her. Sebastien muttered that he didn’t have any plans anyway.</p><p>They began hunting immediately. Sebastien bribed a young PC at the Metropolitan Police for a copy of the investigators’ notes by pretending to be a French reporter. Reassured that none of the information would make it into British papers the young man copied and passed along the notes a page at a time. Then Sebastien had to go to the City of London police for the notes on Catherine’s murder. That took nearly two weeks.</p><p>They were all questioned by police extensively. The police seemed most suspicious of Joseph, despite Andy’s public friendship with Catherine. Emily Birrell even defended young ‘Master Andrew’ to the police in her statement. Not that the word of a whore mattered to police. And despite repeated reassurances of his ‘Greek’ heritage, one PC had called Joseph ‘a lying Semite’ under his breath. Inspector Abberline, the lead detective on the killings, even visited to question the four men lodging at 26 Dorset Street.</p><p>“Maybe you should just tell them you aren’t interested in what Catherine was selling,” Sebastien suggested with a wave of his flask after the police inspectors had been by yet again to question Joseph.</p><p>Andy chastised the Frenchman before Joseph could respond, “That would be a hanging for Nicholas and Joseph, and you, of all of us, know how uncomfortable that would be.”</p><p>Sebastien wisely shut his mouth.</p><p>Joseph openly smirked. Nicholas hid a smile behind his hand.</p><p>For an entire month they roamed and skulked through the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields at night, avoiding footpads and police alike. Sebastien and Nicholas both stopped a few fights and assaults on other prostitutes, but none that turned out to be related to the Leather Apron. About mid-month the infamous “From Hell” letter and a partial kidney were sent to the police. The press started using the name ‘Jack the Ripper’ after that. Towards the end of the month Sebastien swiped the letter for them to examine.</p><p>“Still smells like blood, but that could be from the kidney. There’s also the smell of horse manure, so he spends time around livestock,” Andy handed the sheet to Joseph.</p><p>“Paper quality is cheap,” he observed as he rubbed the sheet between his fingers. He tilted the edge of the paper towards the lantern. “There’s something else written on it. An impression,” Joseph snagged a piece of charcoal from his art box and lightly rubbed it over the single sheet of paper, obliterating the original message. White words where the paper was indented slowly appeared. “It looks like a list.”</p><p>Nicholas held out his hand and Joseph passed over the letter.</p><p>“Mr. Danvers—broth bones, ribs…. Nickels and Goose Tavern—broth bones, fore…. Mrs. Chapman—broth bones, chuck…. It looks like a grocers list. Maybe something a housewife wrote before going out to market?” he guessed.</p><p>“Why would you write the same thing? How many broth bones does one housewife need? And no woman I know bothers to write a shopping list, you buy what you can with what you have. Unless she’s planning a big party you don’t need a list, they just keep it in here,” Andy tapped her forehead. “No one could afford to throw that kind of gathering in Whitechapel anyway.”</p><p>“Maybe a cook for some household?” Nicholas ventured.</p><p>“She wouldn’t live here if she were,” Joseph countered.</p><p>“Are you suggesting the Ripper’s a woman?” Sebastien said.</p><p>“It’s not impossible,” Nicholas’s eyes flicked over to Andy. “Women can be killers too, but why would she? The London police say that women only kill when there’s a benefit, financially or personally. Doesn’t make sense for her to kill unknown prostitutes.”</p><p>“None of this makes sense. These women’s deaths were all senseless,” Andy murmured.</p><p>~~</p><p>All Hallow’s Eve passed without incident, despite police misgivings and the general air of paranoia that lingered everywhere in the slums. Gossips started speculating that the killer had moved on or even better that he’d died.</p><p>It’d been more than a month since Catherine’s death.</p><p>Emily had come by and confessed she was too afraid to go out on All Hallow’s Eve for her doss money. Sebastien had bought her a beer and paid her doss money for the evening, the pair had disappeared down a dark alley for a few minutes. Sebastien offered Andy a defiant expression tinged with guilt when Andy lifted an eyebrow in question upon his return.</p><p>Andy nearly ran into a PC patrolling the streets on her way back to their lodgings that evening, the loud clack of his heels warning her of his approach. She’d slipped into an alley and nimbly scaled her way up the wall. She’d learned the trick of climbing vertical surfaces in Guizhou, China from spider men who’d carried coffins and bodies up cliffs for burial. Andy carefully perched on the edge of the roof as the PC walked past below, she decided to wait a few minutes in case he doubled back on his route.</p><p>She watched a woman proposition a man from her doorstep. The man wore a thick coat against the chill, hat pulled low, a workman’s boots, and he had a bundle under one arm. After a few minutes, the man followed the prostitute inside and Andy relaxed, the Leather Apron had murdered all of his victims on the streets.</p><p>A few minutes later Andy jumped lightly down from the roof and headed back to their rooms.</p><p>The next morning the papers announced the death of yet another Whitechapel murder victim near Dorset street: Mary Anne Kelly.</p><p>~~</p><p>“Dammit!” Andy slammed her fist on the table as Nicholas read the paper out loud to all of them. “I saw him!”</p><p>Rage boiled inside of her, a living burning thing curled in the pit of her stomach that bubbled and boiled the blood in her heart, in her veins. Andy took a deep breath to calm down before she exploded from the frustration.</p><p>“Dark coat with a hat, short dark hair, workman’s boots. He had a bundle under one arm wrapped in leather,” she dug through her memory straining to try to remember more.</p><p>“A leather apron?” Joseph asked.</p><p>Andy paused, “Yes, there were straps like ties holding it closed. It was well-used, one of the straps was a little frayed.” Andy closed her eyes, “It was stained in blood, old and new. Like a butcher’s apron.” Her mouth twisted a little as she opened her mouth and added, “Probably where he was carrying his tools.”</p><p>“Have the police questioned butchers in the area?” Nicholas asked.</p><p>“Extensively,” Sebastien reached for the untidy pile of copied notes. “Every one of them in Whitechapel and Spitalfields, in neighboring areas as well—Bishopsgate, Aldgate. At least the ones within walking distance of any murder.”</p><p>Joseph frowned, “Why nothing further?”</p><p>“Well, we’re assuming he’s not riding in and out of the slums in a horse and carriage. Someone would notice that and the man I saw last night was definitely on foot,” Andy frowned at the memory.</p><p>“What about a tanner?” Nicholas asked. “The police have interviewed surgeons and barbers. London Hospital is in walking distance of Whitechapel, but surgeons and barbers can’t be walking around the streets covered in blood.”</p><p>Andy shook her head, “Tanners use tannins, it would be on their hands and it would get on the clothing of the victims. Any leather tanners are too far from the city, because of the stench. But he <i>is</i> ordinary. He’s someone no one would look twice at. He fits in this neighborhood, he belongs here. He’s from here. He has family. He might even have a wife.”</p><p>“Lord, help that woman,” Sebastien murmured, taking a drink from his flask.</p><p>~~</p><p>“Andy!”</p><p>Nicholas motioned to her from around the corner of their lodgings.</p><p>She rushed to him, “What is it?”</p><p>He stood back enough so that she could see the front of his shirt, soaked in his own blood. The lapel of his coat was also badly slashed and gaped open when he didn’t keep a hand pressed over his collarbone to hold it in place.</p><p>“What happened?”</p><p>“I’ll tell you in our room. I can’t stay on the streets covered in blood!” Nicholas whispered.</p><p>Andy nodded and shrugged out of her coat. Nicholas also removed his coat and pulled the bloody shirt over his head and handed them to her while he put on her coat. She rolled up the bloody articles of clothing and tucked them under one arm to deal with later.</p><p>Once inside and after Joseph had fussed over his lover, now dressed in a cleaner shirt, Nicholas told them he’d heard a woman screaming for help. When he’d discovered her and her assailant the man had slashed at him, cutting a deep gash in his chest before bolting from the scene. The woman had taken off running, literally screaming bloody murder, and bleeding a trail that lead in the direction of London Hospital. The police whistles started to echo through the narrow streets and Nicholas dove into the twisting alleys that made up Whitechapel until he was able to meander his way back to Dorset Street. By then he’d remembered he was covered in his own blood and there was no way he’d be able to just walk inside, so he’d hidden in the alley until he’d spotted Andy.</p><p>“Did you manage to see the man?” Sebastien asked.</p><p>“Yes, but I don’t know how much it’ll help us,” Nicholas said as Joseph immediately got up to grab his drawing supplies. “He’s very common looking. Andy was right, he blends in perfectly.”</p><p>“Go with Yusuf and see if you can’t put together a sketch,” Andy said, frustration making her slip on Joseph’s name. She tossed the bloody shirt at Sebastien, “Here. Get rid of it.” She eyeballed the coat, it was dark, it would hide the blood stains and Joseph could stitch the slash in the lapel.</p><p>A few minutes later the four of them were huddled around the charcoal sketch, Joseph wiping his hands on a clean corner of the bloody shirt.</p><p>A beard hid most of the man’s face, above it were dark eyes with a brow furrowed in a scowl and a nose that had been broken a few too many times to ever be straightened. Nicholas apologized as everyone studied it in silence.</p><p>“It’s fine. We know he’s a killer, but it looks like he’s a fighter too. At least someone who enjoys getting into scuffs bad enough to get his nose broken over. Do you think he might be a bully employed by one of the other lodging houses?” Andy asked. Their own lodging house employed three of them, part time body guards and part time bouncers the landlord used to keep unruly people out, evicted or roughed up tenants who failed to pay their rent, and handled any physical fights that broke out between tenants.</p><p>“We could ask around. I’m sure Simon knows some at the other lodging houses in Whitechapel. Could get him to introduce me,” Sebastien offered. He was on friendlier terms with the veteran bully at their own lodging house, since he liberally shared his gin with the man. Simon was also known to pay for some of the prostitutes’ services, Emily was among his regulars.</p><p>Andy nodded.</p><p>Sebastien hesitated, then asked, “Andy, why are we doing this? We’re fighters, not the police. I know you’re upset about Catherine, but she was just a whore.”</p><p>“You don’t have to help me. I told you that you could walk away and take a break. We can meet up in a year,” Andy said without any heat to her voice. She glared down at Joseph’s sketch, “Why? I liked Catherine,” Andy said simply. “He killed someone I liked. I don’t like a lot of people, Sebastien. There aren’t that many people in this world worth liking.”</p><p>“And isn’t it because stopping him is the right thing to do?” Nicholas asked softly, his fingers laced together with Joseph’s.</p><p>“Assassins with hearts of gold,” Sebastien murmured and sighed. “I’ll go find Simon.” He grabbed Nicholas’s ruined shirt and tucked it into his coat, “After I get some more gin.”</p><p>~~</p><p>The murders slowed down as winter approached or else almost getting caught by Nicholas had spooked the man. Prostitutes didn’t stop plying their trade, but there were simply less victims to choose from and the women had organized themselves into a loose network where one would check on or stand guard as another worked a john. Sebastien toured the lodging houses with his bully friend Simon and acquainted himself with the other men working there. Nicholas had gathered a group of young children whose working parents left them to their own devices during the day. He’d taught them how to read and gave them slices of candied apples at Christmas. They were a surprisingly good source of information, adults didn’t sugar coat anything and the children overheard quite a great deal. Joseph found work illustrating and painting a minor lord’s botany collection, most days he left when it was dark and returned when it was dark.</p><p>They were establishing themselves in the area a little too well for Andy’s taste.</p><p>They moved to another lodging house a few numbers down, but still on Dorset Street, so that Nicholas and Joseph could have their own room. She’d also broken the neck of a man who fancied pretty boys. Sometimes trousers weren’t enough of a protection against men who liked their sex with a lot of violence. The man’s death had been deemed an accident after she’d left his body at the bottom of some stairs. Emily Birrell sometimes came by for a drink with Andy, wallowing in her grief over her friend Catherine. No one wanted to comfort a depressed whore. Emily had started wearing a bright blue scarf of Catherine’s. Andy didn’t ask if Catherine had given it to her or if the woman had taken it after Catherine’s death, it didn’t matter. Catherine certainly didn’t need it anymore. Andy paid Emily’s doss money a few times when the woman had been too drunk or it was too cold outside to work. Emily offered to pay Andy back with the only coin she had to offer, then she’d gotten angry and accused Andy of being a poof when Andy turned her down. Emily stopped coming around their lodgings after that, although Sebastien reported he’d seen her plying her trade when he’d gone out with Simon.</p><p>“Do you think he’s stopped? Maybe gotten bored of this hobby?” Nicholas wondered as he carded his fingers through Joseph’s hair. The man had fallen asleep with his face in Nicholas’s lap after just one beer and a few bites of food in their rooms, fingers stained with ink and one sleeve smeared a vibrant forest green.</p><p>“No,” Andy shook her head adamantly.</p><p>Sebastien nodded in agreement, “He can’t. He delights in it too much.”</p><p>“Delight?” Nicholas asked, his mouth twisted in disgust. “We kill, but I would hardly say I enjoy it.”</p><p>“Oh, he enjoys it. Men like him, they love the blood and the power. I’ve met a few that enjoy beating and torturing those who are weaker, even one who claimed he could get off better after slapping his woman around,” Sebastien took a long swig of his beer. “I never understood the women who stayed.”</p><p>“You said it yourself, Sebastien. They have no power and they’re weak. People will always choose the devil they know,” Andy added. “Give it one year. One year from Catherine’s death, if we haven’t found the man by then we’ll move on. I’ll move on.”</p><p>Spring came and three women were garroted within the month in Whitechapel, however since they’d only been strangled the police decided they were not victims of the Ripper. The press speculated on the fate of the Whitechapel Murderer, then moved onto news about the skirmishes and conflicts in Africa, India, Tibet, and China. Andy itched to find something simple to fight for, some straight forward cause she could spill blood over.</p><p>One evening Joseph returned early, “I had a thought this morning. What if he was a delivery man?”</p><p>He found them at their usual tavern, Sebastien sharing another set of copied notes on the recent deaths in the area. Joseph paused when the barmaid brought him his beer. “I was walking to Lord Bennet’s residence this morning when I thought: What if he was a butcher’s delivery man? I see them walking to work early in the dark mornings, just like me, even bumped into the fellow who delivers to the lord’s house. Leather apron and blood on his hands or under his nails wouldn’t be questioned.”</p><p>“And he would know how to carve up a body and have all the tools he needed,” Nicholas added thoughtfully.</p><p>“Would he kill them before or after he arrived at work?” Sebastien asked.</p><p>“Before,” Andy joined in. “He needs it to be dark. If he was delivering meat, he would have a horse and cart as well as a schedule to keep and killing a woman near the horse would terrify the animal.”</p><p>“The letter!” Nicholas jumped in. “Remember the strange list of broth bones? There must’ve been a delivery list written on the page before he wrote the letter!”</p><p>“What were the names on the list?” Andy asked. “Do you still have the letter, Sebastien?”</p><p>He had a pained expression on his face, “Boss, it’s been months. I threw it out.”</p><p>Joseph made a disparaging noise.</p><p>“Joseph, this is not the time. Try to remember something,” Andy snapped.</p><p>“Nickels and Goose Tavern,” Sebastien said after a minute.</p><p>“Let’s find out who makes their meat deliveries,” Andy said.</p><p>The next day they had an answer: Pickford’s to the west of the Whitechapel slums. Unfortunately, Pickford’s used three different drivers who all delivered to the tavern on a monthly schedule, but their drivers admitted to swapping shifts and routes quite frequently.</p><p>Joseph asked if he should leave his job. Andy told him to keep it, there were three drivers so it only needed three of them to follow the drivers and after nearly a year in London they would need the money Joseph was earning from his drawings. Joseph grumbled, unhappy he wouldn’t be able to hurt the man who’d cut Nicholas.</p><p>“You know I can take care of him myself,” Nicholas said.</p><p>“I do know, but I want to do it for you,” Joseph replied with a wink.</p><p>Andy snorted a laugh at Sebastien’s pained expression as she sat down at their table with four more beers. “You’ll get used to it. It was just the three of us for three hundred years before you joined us. How do you think I felt?”</p><p>~~</p><p>It was summer in London, but the predawn hours were still chilly and Andy wrapped her arms around herself as she followed the sound of the delivery driver’s footsteps. His steps were softer than average, she’d noticed a dark substance smeared to the underside of his boots, dulling the sound of his steps. Most boots clacked loudly on the cobblestones with their wooden soles, the patrolling constables’ footsteps the loudest of all. It was early or late, depending how a person lived their days. Dawn was less than an hour away.</p><p>It was a Wednesday.</p><p>Andy had been following her delivery man, a Mister Browne, for nearly three weeks. They’d drawn names randomly. Nicholas was trailing a Mister Lechmere and Sebastien was following a Mister Paul, all drivers for Pickford’s. A few days later when Sebastien had been reviewing police reports he discovered that Lechmere and Paul had been the ones who had discovered the body of Elizabeth Stride. It seemed a guarantee that one of the two was their killer. Andy felt a surge of resentment at the revelation, but in fairness had continued stalking her assigned prey.</p><p>In three weeks, Andy had learned that James Browne was a clean-shaven man who rented a room on Middlesex Street with a woman he was not married to and the man visited his mother in Spitalfields once a week. He did have a badly broken nose and a chipped front tooth. Browne had a younger sister who still lived with his mother and his stepfather had gotten the boat five years back for petty theft. Browne and an older brother sent money home to his mother and sister weekly. Perfectly ordinary. In fact, quite honorable.</p><p>It was probably why she’d let her guard down and didn’t notice until too late as the man rounded the corner in front of her and slammed a metal horse’s bit into her face.</p><p>A few minutes later Andy woke up, the front of her shirt bloody and her coat filthy from the streets, cursing herself she flicked as much of the muck off her trousers and coat as she could. Where was Browne now? He’d noticed her following him and hadn’t taken kindly to it. Had he just beaten her bloody with that bundle of metal or had he done something worse? Andy tried to decide from the amount of blood soaking her shirt. She pulled the coat in tighter, trying to hide the blood stains by closing it with a large pin.</p><p>Andy moved forward, following Browne’s usual route. This time her ears tuned in for the soft sound of his steps, he’d muffled his boots for a reason.</p><p>A scuffle made her turned down an alley, off Browne’s route, where she saw the man crouched down over the prone body of a woman. Andy silently rushed him.</p><p>She drove her shoulder into him and knocked him over away from the woman. He saw a glimpse of her face in the pre-dawn light and gasped.</p><p>“No! I just killed you!”</p><p>That explained the amount of blood on her shirt then. Andy didn’t respond and unleashed a flurry of hits and punches, pushing him back and pinning him against a wall. Finally she seized him by the throat, grinding the back of his skull hard against the uneven brickwork.</p><p>“Hello, Jack,” she whispered.</p><p>His bloody smile was all the answer she needed.</p><p>“I hope you go to Hell, that your name and deeds disappear from memory and that you’ll be lost with time. You don’t deserve any better,” she whispered as she tightened her hands around his neck. Andy squeezed, his hands beating her uselessly, clawing her hands, his neck and his own face, as she leaned her weight onto her hands.</p><p>Suddenly a loud whistle pierced the air.</p><p>Andy looked behind her, a bobby stood in the mouth of the alley. “Stop right where you are, sir!”</p><p>“Help!” Browne croaked, kicking at Andy and breaking from her grip. He tumbled to the ground on hands and knees.</p><p>The PC blew his whistle one last time and then rushed towards Andy, baton raised. She took the first blow on her forearm, backing away from the terrified young man in uniform who flailed at her with the heavy stick.</p><p>She could hear Browne’s stumbling footsteps as he fled the scene, whistles from further away echoed through the dark city. Andy cursed, twisting to grab the officer’s wrist with her other hand, jerking him to the side and sweeping his feet from underneath him. She punched him, once, twice, out of sheer frustration until he was barely conscious and groaning on the ground. She left him alive, bruised and bloody, but this mess wasn’t his fault.</p><p>Andy spared a quick glance for the nameless woman in the alley with them. She was dead, her throat slashed, her apron tossed aside, and her dress pulled up to reveal one long cut from naval to breast. Andy had interrupted Browne before he’d gotten much further. She gave the woman’s dress a quick tug, pulling it down enough to cover her decently.</p><p>The whistles came closer and she could hear the loud clack of the officers’ shoes as they approached the alley.</p><p>Andy ran.</p><p>~~</p><p>Sebastien was the first to return to their lodgings, he walked in on Andy standing buck naked in the corner of their room wringing what was left of her shirt into a basin full of bloody water. He hurriedly stepped in and shut the door.</p><p>The Frenchman dumped the bloody water in the basin out the window before it was light enough for anyone to notice and trudged back downstairs to haul two buckets of clean water up. Andy cleaned herself as much as she could with their washrag. Sebastien sat on the edge of his bed and shredded the shirt into rags he’d sell to various different kitchens later, keeping his eyes on his work.</p><p>“Why the hell am I always cleaning up after you guys?” he grumbled as he hung the rags on the window sill to dry.</p><p>Nicholas knocked a few minutes later to report his evening had been uneventful. Sebastien waved him in wordlessly. Nicholas took one look at the Frenchman’s expression and came in to sit on the edge of Sebastien’s bed.</p><p>“It’s Browne. He’s clean-shaven, when Joseph gets back I’ll ask him to draw another sketch,” Andy said as she shrugged into Sebastien’s spare shirt. “I’m going to go to Pickford’s to see if he arrived for work. Nicholas, you check his room on Middlesex Street. Sebastien, I need you to go to his mother’s and see if he’s fled there. Leave a note for Joseph.”</p><p>Their searches turned up nothing and after some sleep, the three of them switched locations and searched again. Nicholas being as brazen as to knock on Mrs. Browne’s door pretending to be a colleague from Pickford’s concerned about James’s absence. James Browne was nowhere to be found.</p><p>The next day the newspapers had identified the Ripper’s victim, Alice McKenzie.</p><p>A few days later a torso of an unidentified woman would be fished out of the Thames. Andy suspected this victim was the result of her failure stop the Ripper after interrupting him with Alice.</p><p>~~</p><p>It was Nicholas’s network of street children who finally spotted James Browne, deep in the heart of the St. Giles rookery. The rookery was a squalid collection of buildings that looked like they’d been constructed by a mental patient in the midst of a breakdown. Windows were more often than not covered with rags and the bowels of every building was a maze of connecting rooms and stairs, sometimes paranoid residents even built traps. People were crammed into single room apartments, sometimes 30 individuals shared a room between working hours, one individual would stumble in after a hard day just as another one was vacating the mattress they shared. Of all the rookeries in London, St. Giles was infamous for its patchwork collection of immigrants, criminals, prostitutes, the working poor, the destitute, and the dregs of society. Even the London police hesitated to venture into its unlit warren of streets and rooms, since not all of them returned unscathed. It would take more than a handful of dead prostitutes to convince the police to hunt a killer in St. Giles.</p><p>It only took one for Andy.</p><p>The problem was finding the Ripper among the residents of St. Giles rookery. The only disadvantage for him hiding in the St. Giles rookery was that it was so crowded murder wasn’t possible. The criminals of St. Giles policed their own.</p><p>“Now what?” Sebastien wanted to know. Every building in the rookery had multiple entrances and exits, sometimes connecting to neighboring buildings through windows and tunnels. Even if Nicholas’s collection of street children saw Browne enter somewhere there was no guarantee he was actually sleeping there. Patrolling the edges of the rookery was also impossible, unless they recruited the entire London police force.</p><p>“He’ll have to come out eventually. He’s lost his job and his mother’s still relying on his income,” Andy said. They were arranged on the furniture in Andy and Sebastien’s room. Nicholas and Joseph having usurped Sebastien’s bed perched on the edge, knees pressed against each other’s. Sebastien was in the only chair in the room and Andy sat cross legged on her own bed.</p><p>“Think he’ll go back to his woman?” Nicholas asked.</p><p>Joseph shook his head, “I swung by there in the evening yesterday, she’s already gone. Couldn’t pay the rent.”</p><p>“There has to be some way to force him out of that rat nest,” Andy mused, chewing on the edge of a thumbnail.</p><p>“We could go in after him,” Sebastien suggested. “There are plenty of criminals and forgers hiding inside St. Giles. I think I’d fit right in. I could find him.”</p><p>Andy considered it for a moment then shook her head, “I don’t like it.”</p><p>Sebastien snorted, “What’s he going to do? Kill me?”</p><p>“There are worse things than death. You know that,” Nicholas said softly.</p><p>“I do know! I’m the one with the nightmares, after all, not you,” Sebastien shot back. “I can do this. I haven’t been around as long as all of you, but I know what I’m doing. Fuck. I just want to finish this.”</p><p>“Fine, but you meet us at the pub every few days or send word around that you can’t make it,” Andy stipulated. “I will empty the entire nest if something happens to you.”</p><p>~~</p><p>Andy and Nicky continued patrolling along the edges of St. Giles, staying to the streets that marked an unofficial border between the rookery and the rest of Whitechapel. Sebastien began establishing a forgery network, mostly letters of reference for household staff, governesses, and a few marriage certificates here and there. He struck up a friendship with another forger who convinced him to try his hand at antique forgery, the upper crust of Victorian England craved relics and trinkets they could claim came from far away exotic lands.</p><p>Andy laughed at Sebastien’s first few attempts to forge ancient Roman coins and offered some suggestions for improvement.</p><p>He also told them he suspected that James Browne was working for one of the gambling dens as a bully. It would take him time to check each one. It was progress, a slow sluggish forward crawl, but after losing in Africa the idea of quitting now chaffed. Especially since it was just one man.</p><p>Hard boot heels clacked down the street behind her and Andy hurriedly rounded a corner, gripping the bricks with her fingertips and pulling herself up the wall. She hadn’t yet reached the top of the building when the PC stepped onto the street below her. She froze, holding perfectly still in the dim dark above the gaslight halo, her forearms burning and her fingertips bright stabbing points of pain as she waited for him to pass. As soon as the officer was out of sight, Andy pulled herself the rest of the way up to the roof and let out a small groan as she stood up, her forearms felt as though they would burst after hanging on the face of the wall like a barnacle.</p><p>Andy looked out over the edge of the roof at Whitechapel, the city looked different from up here. The gaslight glow dimmed by hulking black buildings and St. Giles just a street over was a black gaping maw because lamplighters wouldn’t venture into the warren of streets there.</p><p>Movement caught her eye.</p><p>A man down below clutched a woman to him with his arm around her throat. He’d lifted her up off the ground, but it was the silent kicking motion of her legs that had caught Andy’s attention.</p><p>It was easy to run to the edge of the building and drop down like a vengeful angel descending from on high. The man let out a startled yell and let go, revealing a bright blue scarf around Emily Birrell’s neck. Emily attempted to push the man away as Andy rushed them.</p><p>James Browne gave her a shocked look before he shoved the prostitute at Andy and fled. Emily crashed into Andy with grasping hands, clutching at Andy and her lips begging for help as she coughed and wheezed.</p><p>“Shhh!” Andy whispered as she leaned Emily against the wall and disentangled her hands.</p><p>As soon as she was free of the woman Andy pounded down the street after the Ripper. He was headed back into St. Giles.</p><p>Andy heedlessly chased after the man, racing into the darkened streets of the St. Giles rookery. A door banged shut in her face, she ripped it open, her fury pumping through her veins as she followed his footsteps inside. It was dark inside, but in his panic he was making enough noise a blind man would’ve been able to track him. Screams broke out as Jack and Andy burst into the room, the sounds of people hurriedly scurrying to get out the way. The dark room was filled with bodies, living ones that rushed to get out of the way as Jack and Andy burst into their midsts. A few doors slammed shut as the residents rushed to hide or escape the violence that was coming. Jack’s steps hurriedly tapped their way up a flight of stairs, Andy kicked the first step with her boot in the dim light. She started up.</p><p>The only warning she got a heavy thud above her, then something slammed into her with the force of a hungry bear. Andy screamed and crashed back down the stairs, something sharp ripping into her face and hands.</p><p>She thudded back to the bottom of the stairs, the heavy thing on top of her. Andy struggled, kicking her feet for traction to shove whatever it was off her.</p><p>A moment later a light from the top of the stairs descended, she couldn’t really see the source since the thing on top of her blocked part of her vision. She realized what was pressing her into the ground was a heavy wooden door. It had been embedded with spikes and one was currently impaling her hand to her shoulder. Andy took stock, another spike was in her hip, grinding against the bone and another was in the soft tissue of her torso, but her legs weren’t impaled.</p><p>“You’re a daring boy,” James murmured above her. “Did you know the whore I killed?”</p><p>“I knew one of them,” Andy cursed as she shoved at the door.</p><p>James put one foot on the smooth side of the door and leaned an elbow down on his knee adding his weight to it. Andy grunted, struggling not to scream as the spike in her hip attempted to puncture the bone.</p><p>“Ah, right. You did call me Jack that night,” he stepped back, taking his weight off the door, and drew a dagger from his belt. “I don’t enjoy butchering men as much as women, but your face is pretty enough I’m going to make an exception.”</p><p>Andy responded with a grunt as she lifted the door with her uninjured leg, flipping it over her head at the man. The edge dug into her chest, the creak and crack of a few ribs echoing through her lungs as he yelled.</p><p>The door didn’t trap him, like it had her on the stairwell, since he had more space to maneuver. However, he dropped the oil lamp and it broke, a small flame dancing on the puddle of evil-smelling oil on the floor threw shadows wildly across the cluttered room. Andy lurched to her feet and pulled her own dagger. In a quick motion she slit James Browne’s throat, severing his carotid artery, and in another slash cut him from naval to breast. His hands flew to his throat, blade tumbling from his grip, blood glugging from between his fingertips. Andy followed his backwards tumble, plunging her dagger into his gut and jerking the blade across his torso, warm guts spilling over her hand as he fell to the floor. She waited until the gurgling choking noises stopped and the eerie stillness of death filled the room.</p><p>“I hope this helps, Catherine,” Andy whispered as she stared down at the corpse in the faint glow from the shattered lamp. The black puddle beneath him grew and grew. She wiped her blade on the dead man’s shirt.</p><p>She carefully put out the flames, extinguishing the dancing shadows of light in the room.</p><p>Andy found the door and limped out into the dark streets of St. Giles, her hip still healing. A few people milled about on the darkened streets, either alone or in pairs. A dark form a few doors down whipped towards her, Andy dropped into a defense crouch even as her hip protested.</p><p>“Andy,” it was Sebastien.</p><p>She relaxed. “I got him. He’s dead.” She frowned, “How did you know I was here?”</p><p>He shrugged, “First, let’s go. Nicholas is waiting for us.”</p><p>Andy nodded and limped towards the direction she’d chased the Ripper in. She pulled her coat in tighter, covering the blood.</p><p>Sebastien tapped her shoulder and pointed down another alley, “That way’s faster.” He mimicked her frown when he noticed she was limping. “Still healing?”</p><p>Andy grunted an affirmative.</p><p>Sebastien pulled her arm over his shoulders without any further questions, to anyone watching they were two drunken friends on their way out of the rookery after a long night of heavy drinking. “Emily Birrell recognized you and went to our lodgings to find one of us after you rescued her, she found Nicholas and he sent one of his little street children to my room. I’d already figured out the room he was renting was near here, so I came.”</p><p>“Good.”</p><p>By the time they’d reached their lodgings Andy’s limp was gone but the ache was still there. Was it her imagination or was her healing taking more time than it used to?</p><p>The bully wouldn’t allow Emily inside since she hadn’t paid any doss money and there were no available communal beds this evening, so the poor woman was huddled on the doorstep just outside. Nicholas was there as well, standing in front attempting to block the chilly autumn wind that promised winter soon. When Andy appeared, Emily cried and thanked her and even attempted to hug Andy. Andy gently guided the weeping woman towards Nicky, who was much better at comforting people in distress. He had studied to be a priest after all.</p><p>Andy told the woman that Catherine could rest now and the women of Whitechapel had one less murderer to worry about. Feigning exhaustion, Andy fled to her room to change and wipe the blood from her skin with a wet rag. She’d done what needed to be done and she didn’t know how to handle Emily’s hysterics.</p><p>“I gave her some doss money, there aren’t any rooms here tonight, but she said another lodging house was holding a bed for her.” Nicholas reported softly as he and Sebastien slipped into the room. “Did you get him, boss?”</p><p>Andy nodded, “I did. Now we can forget about him.” She put the damp shirt back on, fingering the tear just above her shoulder. They needed new shirts, all of them.</p><p>Sebastien lamented, “My second best shirt.”</p><p>Andy smiled, “The last year has been rather hard on our wardrobes, hasn’t it?”</p><p>“I know an excellent tailor in Milan,” Nicholas quipped. “It’s the end of the week, Joseph will get paid and we could set sail before the winter storms settle in.”</p><p>It sounded like an excellent idea and a good way to forget about London and Jack.</p><p>“Why not?”</p>
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